Hot Topics:

Colorado Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic, Jobs

The gospel of prosperity

Bishop Dennis Leonard has created a multimillion-dollar enterprise fed by devoted followers, some with little to spare.

Posted:
10/08/2006 01:00:00 AM MDT

Updated:
10/25/2006 01:44:22 AM MDT

Bishop Dennis Leonard leads worship. (Post special / Kirk Speer)

Click photo to enlarge

A sign outside the church sets the tone one of forgiveness and healing.
This church gave me hope, says Earl Shackelford. I could talk about my
drug habits and they d understand, help me see I could live without it.

From the senior pastor, who chased the almighty dollar and spent his evenings in bars before he was saved, to the former drug addict directing traffic in the parking lot, the church holds itself out as a place of forgiveness and healing.

It's a church where members donate Toys "R" Us gift cards to the children of prisoners at Christmas, and classes offer cures for "hurts, habits and hang-ups."

Heritage Christian Center is also a place where Bishop Dennis Leonard wears a Rolex and drives a Cadillac but won't answer questions about the budget, families are urged to give to the church before they pay their bills, and good works stand in contrast to arrangements that financially benefit the church's first family.

Leonard, 57, a former building contractor and entrepreneur turned Pentecostal preacher, is a practitioner of what scholars call the prosperity gospel, the teaching that God wants his followers to flourish financially. Leonard tells an estimated 7,000 people who attend services each weekend that spiritual and material blessings await them if they "put God first" and donate the first 10 percent of their income to the church.

An examination of public records and interviews with former church leaders and members reveal a largely unknown side of a church empire that began 21 years ago in Leonard's basement and has grown into one of metro Denver's most prominent religious institutions:

Project Heritage, a nonprofit founded by the church, was faulted for squeezing too much profit out of a government program to help low-income families buy renovated homes.

Advertisement

Leonard's daughter-in-law and the daughters of the board chairman earned real estate commissions on the home sales, which the government flagged as a conflict of interest.

The lead real estate agent at the time said a Project Heritage executive told her to funnel half her commission income back to the nonprofit and pressure a lender to donate half his profits to a ranch for youths founded by Garret Leonard, the pastor's younger son.

Message Boards:Join the discussions: Share your thoughts on this story.
Documents:HUD-sanctioned audit: A 19-page report examining a homebuying program run by Project Heritage, a nonprofit founded by Heritage Christian Center

The executive denied the former claim, and Garret Leonard called the latter charge "a lie from hell itself."

While many of his church members live on the edge financially, Leonard enjoys a luxurious lifestyle, living in a $1.4 million home in the gated golf community of Castle Pines Village, driving luxury vehicles and vacationing at a condo in Mexico. The bishop also flew across the country on a multimillion-dollar church-owned jet, angering some church members, before it was sold.

The church became fertile ground for a sales networking business that involved Michele Leonard, the bishop's third wife, and his elder son, Mark. They and other Heritage pastors recruited others in the church community to buy and sell wellness products for which they could earn extra income based on the sales of their recruits.

A board of elders that established Bishop Leonard's salary was restructured, taking that decision away from church members. Leonard now sits on the church's board of directors, and the church says an outside independent board sets his salary.

"Oftentimes, people who become very trusting don't realize that even if you're a single mother, a widow or elderly, you have the right and responsibility to ask questions about where even your humble donations may be going," said state Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, a former Heritage assistant pastor. "I just hurt for people who may give their last penny believing it's in the name of the Lord when it's not clear where the money really goes."

Church officials say donations are spent responsibly to support programs for needy people and are handled with integrity, describing steps including hiring a high-profile legal team to ensure IRS compliance.

"These are good people, serving the community and their congregation, trying to be as aboveboard as humanly possible," said Jackelyn Viera Iloff, a public relations specialist hired to represent the church. "They do everything within the legal boundaries laid out by the federal government. We're doing everything by the book."

The portrait that emerges of Heritage Christian Center is a conflicting one.

While preaching a gospel of wealth, Leonard also urges the faithful to give back: The church runs one of the city's largest food banks, a "breakfast club" that prepares meals for the homeless in shelters and parks, a prison ministry that installed 26 satellite dishes in state prisons and an emergency outreach that clothed Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

"Ministry to us is not about money," Leonard said in an interview. "Ministry is defined as meeting needs with love. Ministry is not about buildings and cars and TV cameras. Ministry is about helping that drug addict get off drugs. It's about feeding a hungry family. It's about helping that woman who has lost her husband recover from that grief."

The first white bishop ordained in a predominantly black fellowship of churches, Leonard has earned a national reputation for building a multiracial congregation during what has been called the most segregated hour in America - 11 a.m. Sunday.

His face is well-known throughout Denver thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign including TV programs on national religious networks and ads in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News.

Leonard has found success with sermons that sound like counseling sessions, the allure of happiness and prosperity, a choir good enough to release a CD on a national record label and a relaxed atmosphere where "Sunday best" can mean a three-piece suit or jeans.

His lack of formal theological education is almost a point of pride. A folksy speaker who often slips into the cadences of the traditional black preacher, Leonard has been known to shed tears on the pulpit when reminiscing about a past divorce. He mines his own experience to connect with people who relate to the sign out front that says, "Sinners Welcome Here."

Earl Shackelford was riding the bus when a fellow passenger invited him to Heritage.

He had just moved to Denver from Atlanta, where he'd been evicted from three rental houses for drug use. He wound up a church volunteer directing traffic in the parking lot.

"Other churches, you feel like an outcast," said Shackelford, 51. "This church gave me hope. I could just be me. I could talk about my drug habits and they'd understand, help me see I could live without it."

He took to heart the church's call to serve. The owner of a janitorial business, Stepter volunteered as an usher, deacon and a trusted member of the church's elder board.

Back then, being a Heritage elder meant overseeing the church's finances and establishing the senior pastor's salary based on consultants' recommendations, he said.

In 2004, Stepter said, he urged his peers to consider lowering Dennis Leonard's salary because church offerings had declined.

"I was suggesting that the guys should look at that and not just do a rubber-stamp thing," Stepter said. "Something had to change. Someone must have overheard me, because right after that, the board changed."

Garret Leonard said the church did change its governance structure but Stepter's recommendation had nothing to do with it.

The church now has three advisory boards composed of deacons, elders and ministers, church officials said.

A board of directors made up of Dennis, Michele and Garret Leonard and church security chief Reid Boone deals with the church's day-to-day operations, including personnel decisions, structuring of church departments and budget and spending decisions, church officials said.

One exception is establishing the salaries of Dennis Leonard and other church leaders. Those figures are approved by an outside, independent compensation committee with members who are not related to any church officers, the church says. The church would not identify committee members.

Garret Leonard said an outside group, rather than elders from the church, is better positioned to make unbiased decisions.

When asked about his salary and the church budget, Dennis Leonard gives the same answer: "None of your business."

Stepter, the former elder, said Leonard's church salary was roughly $750,000 in 2004. Garret Leonard said that's wrong but would not specify his father's salary. He would only say his father earns less than $750,000 a year, and when the compensation board recommended a "very, very, very high salary," his father refused.

The IRS requires that pastors' compensation be "reasonable," a figure set by collecting comparable salaries, weighing factors such as church size and a pastor's value to the congregation.

About 100 other large churches that adhere to standards set by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability pay their senior pastors on average $140,000 a year, said Ken Behr, the group's president.

Behr said the trend among evangelical churches is toward greater financial transparency, though churches are not required to make their budgets public and usually don't disclose pastors' salaries.

Theresa Russaw, 79, spoke for many devoted Heritage members when she said she has no idea what Leonard earns for a living and does not care.

"When it leaves my hand, it is no longer my responsibility," Russaw said. "If they are right, God will bless them. If they're wrong, God will deal with it. And so far, God has been blessing us."

Garret Leonard said the church's annual budget is about $9.5 million, with about $1.5 million going to salaries for the church's 55-person staff. He would not say whether that figure includes his father's compensation.

In dispute at Heritage is the status of annual business meetings in which former members said the budget, donations and aggregate salaries for staff had previously been shared with the broader membership.

Stafford and several others said the meetings - required by the church's original bylaws - were done away with years ago.

"The congregation was kept in the dark about how the money was spent," said Joel Moreno, a former Hispanic ministries pastor. "If anyone wanted to question anything, they were met with hostility and accused of being unfaithful or disloyal."

Garret Leonard said only two or three people attended past business meetings - "Obviously, they didn't care," he said - while former members say the meetings were held at inconvenient times and minimally advertised.

Michele Leonard said that the church never discontinued the business meetings and that the most recent one, in 2005, focused on the Legacy Center, a $6 million church expansion project.

But Stafford said she attended that meeting and no information about the church budget or salaries was shared as it had been in years past.

Church officials cite other examples of keeping members informed. In August, Heritage added a new feature to its website titled "accountability," which details everything from how salaries are established to the number of staff members who must be present when the collection is counted.

Dennis Leonard's success has afforded him a comfortable lifestyle. He and his wife live in a $1.4 million four- bedroom, five-bathroom, three-fireplace home in Castle Pines Village, the most recent assessor's records show.

The couple also own a three-bedroom condo in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that Michele Leonard said the couple makes available to church staff and other pastors for free.

"He has a nice home and he dresses well, but that's not unlike any CEO or CFO of a fairly good-sized organization," said longtime church member Richard Chana. "I would challenge a lot of people in Denver to tell me who has done more for the community."

While Dennis Leonard drives a Cadillac Escalade, his wife drives one of two Mercedes vehicles, Mark drives an Escalade, and Garret drove a Mercedes until his lease recently expired. Garret Leonard said the Leonards pay for the vehicles but are compensated for the vehicles' use on church business.

"How we choose to spend our salary is up to us," he said. "What difference does it make if I drive a Bentley or a Yugo?"

Youth center delayed

Back in the late 1990s, building a youth center at Heritage took on heightened importance at the church, several former members said. The 1999 funeral of Columbine High School shooting victim Isaiah Shoels was held at the church and broadcast on CNN, further demonstrating the need for a safe haven for kids.

Blueprints were drawn up for a $10 million building, former elder Stepter said. Dennis Leonard offered up his Harley-Davidson motorcycle to raise money for the cause.

Also in 1999, Leonard was settling into a new role as bishop of multicultural ministries for the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, a New Orleans-based confederation of churches. The group blends Baptist tradition with Pentecostalism's lively worship and belief in prophesy, healing and speaking in tongues, an ecstatic speech attributed to the Holy Spirit.

Talk turned to buying a private plane for Leonard's trips speaking to churches about healing racial divides. By saving him the hassle of baggage claim and security lines, the church would "protect the anointing," said former church accountant Dominique Harmon.

"He came before the congregation and said, 'You know, I want a plane, but we're going to go for this youth center,"' Harmon recalled. "He said, 'I am sacrificing my Isaac and I'm not getting a plane so we can get a youth center."'

Garret Leonard said he doesn't recall his father saying that.

In early 2000, the church took out a $1 million loan and purchased a seven-seat Hawker Siddeley DH.125-400A jet built in 1969, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

The plane didn't perform as hoped and after nearly crashing outside Milwaukee in a storm, the elder board signed off on buying a larger jet to ease concerns about Bishop Leonard's safety, Garret Leonard said.

So in 2001, the church sold the Hawker and bought an 11-passenger 1981 Canadair CL-600 Challenger jet with a Matterhorn white exterior, leather seating, burl walnut woodwork and surround-sound stereo, FAA records show. That plane would have been worth about $7.8 million at the time, according to Conklin & deDecker Aviation Information, an aviation research firm.

Craig Bird, the church's pilot, said he flew Leonard to black churches across the South and on a trip to Mexico, where Leonard handed out toothbrushes and bluejeans to orphans who scavenged the dumps outside Puerto Vallarta for food. Bird said he took Leonard on perhaps two personal trips in two and a half years.

"In my 40 years of aviation, that was the most frugal operation I ever ran," Bird said. "They watched every penny because they didn't want to spend the congregation's assets unwisely. We weren't flowing Champagne or staying at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. We were staying at low-budget hotels and not spending a lot of cash."

Even so, the second plane grew too expensive and was grounded in July 2002, Bird said. Former elder Stepter said the plane sat in a hangar for months. Records show it was sold in June 2004.

Garret Leonard said the elder board supported waiting on the youth center. He said contributions to the youth center are still earmarked for it, and a youth facility is one piece of the planned church expansion.

Others say that regardless of how donations were designated, the purchase of the plane demonstrates misplaced priorities. Stepter, Harmon and Stafford said the jet purchases angered some pastors, elders and church members.

Audit upends project

Given its origins as a church that handed out groceries to the hungry in its first days, it was natural in 1997 when Heritage Christian Center founded Project Heritage, a nonprofit group providing housing, food and job training to the needy.

Hundreds of people turned to Project Heritage for vouchers for bus rides, help with groceries and bills and job references.

One of the nonprofit's biggest ventures was a program for low-income homebuyers run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Not only did the HUD program become an important Project Heritage funding source, the revenue potential caught the attention of Leonard family members.

State Rep. Stafford, Project Heritage's current board chairwoman, said she objected to a plan to use Project Heritage home sales to help pay for Garret Leonard's youth ranch.

"I brought a warning to the church," said Stafford, also a pastor at Heritage at the time. "I said that if we did not make sure our firewalls were protected between our different organizations, we were putting ourselves in jeopardy."

HUD suspended Project Heritage from its program last year after auditors found different problems - excessive profits and other violations.

Under the HUD program, participating nonprofits purchase agency-repossessed homes at a markdown, renovate the homes and sell them to low-income homebuyers at a discount.

Over five years, Project Heritage bought and resold 350 properties, employing a team of contractors, consultants and real estate brokers.

One of the key players was Gini Scott, 30, a hard-charging real estate agent skilled at navigating courthouse title records and picking the right homes. She also is the daughter of Richard Chana, who was Project Heritage board chair at the time - a conflict of interest, according to an audit firm hired by HUD.

The audit, which covered 141 properties bought and sold from Jan. 1, 2002, to Sept. 30, 2004, and a subsequent HUD letter found:

The conflicts of interest on the realty team went beyond Scott, the lead agent. Her sister, Vicki Chana, and Helen Leonard, daughter-in-law of Dennis Leonard and wife of Mark Leonard, also were part of the sales team.

Even homes that needed little or no work were marked up substantially when Project Heritage resold them. On 28 properties that needed a total of $8,000 in renovations, Project Heritage charged $870,000 more than what it had paid HUD for the homes.

Homebuyers' costs were driven up by excessive fees paid to lenders and inflated payments to real estate brokers and a consultant. On 56 property sales, real estate brokers earned 8 percent commissions and in one case 9 percent - higher than the customary 6 percent commission in Colorado.

For two years, Project Heritage borrowed roughly 2 percent more than the amount needed to buy each home, deposited the extra money in an account for its own use, then claimed it as an allowable development cost instead of profit. The nonprofit used the extra money to subsidize its transitional housing facility.

Don Bates, the Project Heritage executive director, said setting up a money market or similar account is the cost of doing business with a lender offering a line of credit. He told HUD that classifying the 2 percent fee as a cost was due to a misunderstanding.

As a result of the audit, Project Heritage pledged to discontinue the 2 percent charge, eliminate contractor fees, reduce real estate commissions and hire a new real estate team, among other steps, records show.

Bates said despite missteps, Project Heritage did an enormous amount of good, putting most people into homes with $5,000 to $30,000 in equity. He said that in 2004 alone, Project Heritage donated $124,000 to help buyers with closing costs.

"There was nothing ever done illegally or fraudulently," Bates said. "There was nothing that we deliberately did to hurt anybody. We were simply working the program, got audited, found some things that needed to be corrected and changed them."

Scott, the lead Project Heritage real estate broker, said in an interview that Project Heritage and Heritage Christian Center officials engaged in other questionable practices that escaped the notice of HUD.

Scott said part of her business involved donating commission income back to Project Heritage.

Buying and selling property as a Project Heritage contractor was Scott's full-time job, and in her best year she said she took home $250,000 in commissions and donated another $250,000 back to Project Heritage.

At first, she said, her contributions took the form of "referral fees" to a real estate company managed by Richard Chana, her father and the Project Heritage board chairman, which then donated the money to Project Heritage.

When she stopped the practice, she said Bates told her that if she didn't give half her commission income back to Project Heritage, "he would be looking for a new listing agent."

So in mid-2004, Scott said, she started donating directly to Project Heritage. Scott provided records to The Denver Post showing she gave $51,367.16 back to the nonprofit for sales of 14 properties over two months.

Bates, who also has served as a minister at the church, said in an interview that he never ordered Scott to give back to Project Heritage and told her she could do whatever she pleased with her earnings.

Chana said he knew nothing about demands from Bates for contributions to Project Heritage but confirmed that his firm did give money donated by his daughter to the charity.

Scott said her father's intent was to help Project Heritage, not do anything wrong. Scott said that after the Leonards learned how much money was at stake, she was told to train Helen Leonard, Mark Leonard's wife, as a Project Heritage broker.

Scott said she is speaking out because she feels auditors wrongly portrayed her as a greedy real estate broker.

Reached on her cellphone, Helen Leonard said Scott's depiction of her role with Project Heritage was "100 percent inaccurate," but she declined to elaborate.

Vicki Chana and Mark Leonard declined to comment.

Following the funds

Project Heritage's income potential also was noticed by Garret Leonard, who was pursuing his long-held dream of opening a horse ranch in Douglas County for disadvantaged youths, Scott and Stafford said.

Garret, 35, is the younger of Dennis Leonard's two sons. A rodeo enthusiast who wears a cowboy hat and a scar on his forehead from being tossed by a bull, Garret founded Destiny Ranch as a separate nonprofit in 2004 with the mission of "healing the hopeless heart and restoring the broken spirit."

The Denver Department of Human Services, which accepted Garret Leonard's invitation to send children to the ranch at no cost, speaks highly of the program.

In fall 2004, Garret closed on a 38-acre parcel outside Franktown for $700,000, records show. He already owned an adjacent 37-acre tract purchased for $190,820 in 1999. He, not the nonprofit, owns the ranch property.

Garret Leonard had forecast contributions of $60,000 to Destiny Ranch for the last quarter of 2004, but only $7,150 was raised, according to correspondence between Leonard and the IRS obtained in a public records request.

Enter Project Heritage. Scott said that Bates told her Garret Leonard wanted her to contact Steve Schultz of Green Tree Investments, one of Project Heritage's lenders.

She said her directions were to tell Schultz that he would be required to donate half of his profits to Destiny Ranch or lose the $2 million line of credit he provided to Project Heritage. That business deal earned Schultz a 3 percent profit on each sale in the form of discount points and loan origination fees.

"My reaction was kicking and screaming and saying that's not right," Scott said. "I was told, 'Do this or you're fired.' (Schultz) was livid. He asked whether it was extortion."

Schultz confirmed Scott's account of their conversation.

"I basically told her, 'I don't want anything to do with these guys,"' he said, declining to say more.

Garret Leonard called that version of events "a lie from hell itself." Bates also denied telling Scott to make that request of Schultz.

Scott provided records showing Project Heritage used Schultz's line of credit for five more home sales before the relationship between the parties ended.

Next, Garret Leonard recommended a different lender: Robert Sigg, a Parker businessman and church member.

Garret Leonard said Sigg offered to set up a line of credit for Project Heritage with the understanding that Sigg would earn 1 percent profit and donate another 2 percent to Destiny Ranch.

In the Destiny Ranch articles of incorporation, Sigg is listed as a founding board member and treasurer.

At the time, Sigg was under federal indictment for his relatively minor role in a bank loan scam.

Sigg, then 39, was one of six people indicted in April 2004 in U.S. District Court in Denver involving a scheme to fraudulently obtain bank loans and lines of credit using falsified loan documents, court records show. Losses totaled more than $19 million, according to the FBI.

Sigg was paid to falsely verify the employment records of a straw buyer, the indictment alleges. Court records show he pleaded guilty in December 2004 to bank fraud and was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $141,163 in restitution.

Garret Leonard said he did not know about Sigg's criminal case at the time. Leonard said that he was asked by the IRS to drop Sigg from the board but that he wasn't told why and didn't ask. Sigg was removed from the board.

Documents detailing Garret Leonard's application for tax-exempt status for Destiny Ranch to the IRS tell a different story:

In an April 2005 letter to Garret Leonard, an IRS official described finding out about Sigg's indictment on the Internet. He asked Leonard about it.

Leonard responded to the IRS a month later that Sigg agreed to resign from the board after a conversation with Sigg about the allegations against him.

Garret Leonard would not explain the discrepancy. But he emphasized he cannot judge Sigg for his past.

"What Rob has done in the past is none of my business," Leonard said. "... If you're sorry for what you've done, then God forgives you. For me to judge Rob about what he did before I knew him, that would be totally hypocritical. What happened is between him, God and apparently the federal government."

In an interview, Sigg disagreed with Leonard on several key points. Sigg said that while he talked with Garret Leonard about serving as treasurer and helping the ranch find corporate sponsors, he did not ask to be on the board and didn't even know he was on it.

Sigg said he and Leonard never talked about his indictment or its impact on his board status, nor did Sigg commit to donating money to Destiny Ranch in connection with his $2 million line of credit to Project Heritage.

Garret Leonard said he told Bates, the Project Heritage executive director, to get HUD's permission before moving forward with any plan to fund Destiny Ranch through Project Heritage home sales. When HUD said no, the idea was abandoned, Garret Leonard said.

Later, in February 2005, Stafford, Chana's successor as Project Heritage board chair, sent a letter to Bishop Dennis Leonard outlining her concerns about funding Destiny Ranch through HUD home sales, which she described as a "kickback scheme."

Six days after sending the letter, Stafford said, she was fired as an assistant pastor at the church. By that time, the church had relinquished its controlling stake in Project Heritage, and the nonprofit's board kept Stafford as chairwoman.

In a response relayed through a spokesperson, Garret Leonard said there were no kickbacks and Stafford's firing had nothing to do with the letter.

"She was fired because she was a terrible employee who did not have the church's best interests in mind, only her political career," he said.

Stafford disputed that, saying the church welcomed her knowing about her legislative commitments.

H. William Mahaffey, a Colorado Springs tax attorney who has represented other nonprofit groups in the HUD home sales program, said he was surprised at the "black-and-white, pretty egregious violations" auditors found with Project Heritage.

Mahaffey said Project Heritage may have violated IRS prohibitions on "private inurement," which say no part of a nonprofit's net earnings may be used for the private benefit of insiders or any person except for reasonable compensation for work done.

"If your principal purpose is to make sure you've got a stream of brokerage and commission income for friends and family members, then you're not operating for a charitable purpose any longer," Mahaffey said.

Despite a history of violations, HUD allowed Project Heritage back into the homebuying program on a limited basis in December after the nonprofit agreed to reforms.

By then, Chana, whose daughters earned the Project Heritage real estate commissions, had stepped down from the Project Heritage board, and Heritage Christian Center had resigned as the sole voting member of the nonprofit.

Despite being given another chance with HUD, Project Heritage could not line up new financing and put all activities on hiatus late last month as it plans to reorganize under a different name, Stafford said.

She said Bates and Project Heritage parted on amicable terms.

Before the home-sales program unraveled, Project Heritage was required to pay down the mortgages on re-sales that had turned too much profit.

One Project Heritage homebuyer, Phillipa Cochran, had already lost her home, so she never received that assistance. She sold her $151,400 home on Hummingbird Circle in Brighton after three months when her husband was laid off from a furniture company.

"That's dishonest," Cochran said of the violations auditors found with Project Heritage. "We are all trying to get somewhere and find homes for ourselves and make our own way. For being a Christian organization, that's unacceptable."

Building new businesses

Bishop Dennis Leonard often speaks from the pulpit about the business opportunities God will bestow on the faithful giver.

Earlier this decade, opportunity existed to earn extra income in the Heritage community. And Leonard's wife and son sold the dream.

Sales pitches for Melaleuca, one of the nation's largest network marketing companies, swept the church, former members say. Like Amway, Melaleuca touts financial independence to its network of independent distributors who sell products and earn extra cash based on the sales of distributors they recruit.

Michele and Mark Leonard promoted Melaleuca's line of skin lotions, health-food supplements and other products derived from oil from the Australian Melaleuca tree, former members said.

Some pastors questioned Melaleuca's presence in the church, said Dereck Anderson, a former assistant pastor at Heritage who joined Michele Leonard's sales team. In retrospect, he said, the critics were right.

"If I'm a pastor and I call a meeting, call it a special meeting and say, 'You can make some money,' you're going to come," Anderson said. "When you misuse your clout, the cause of Christ is blemished."

Michele Leonard described her involvement with Melaleuca as minimal, saying she made very little money and mostly helped Mark with his business.

According to Garret Leonard, Mark Leonard staged a Melaleuca meeting on church property, and Garret Leonard told his brother it was inappropriate. Mark Leonard declined comment through a spokesperson.

Laurie Randolph, a former assistant to Mark Leonard, said select church members were given a new business opportunity last year: Nouveau Riche, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that also relies on independent distributors to market real estate investment products, classes and seminars promising "a life of discovery and abundance."

At the time, one of Nouveau Riche's Colorado representatives was Robert Sigg, the church member convicted for bank fraud and involved in the Project Heritage financing plan.

Wealthier church members were invited to a Nouveau Riche meeting in the sanctuary, which was filmed for promotional purposes, Randolph and others said.

"We believe in owning homes and giving people leadership skills to own a business," Garret Leonard said.

Arlene Kramer, regional vice president of Nouveau Riche, said the company paid to use the church's recording facilities.

Dennis Leonard did not leave the business world entirely behind, either.

In 2003, he founded Legacy Publishers International, a for-profit company that publishes his books and those of other Christian authors. The company has released two gospel CDs featuring the church choir under the imprint Praizia Music.

Ellen Aprill, a nonprofit tax law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said she believes the activities of officials with Heritage and its affiliated nonprofits should be scrutinized under a set of IRS tax laws called intermediate sanctions.

Adopted in 1996 to prevent insiders from gaining excess benefits from tax-exempt organizations, the IRS applies the laws to churches and charities.

"The transactions as described suggest strongly that the IRS should investigate possible violations of these rules," said Aprill, who previously worked in the Office of Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Church officials say they are on solid legal footing. Earlier this year, Heritage said, it hired Marcus Owens, a Washington attorney and former director of the IRS's exempt organizations division, to ensure the church is complying with IRS rules and regulations.

Another church lawyer, J. David Epstein of Philadelphia, has represented other large ministries and produced a video, "How to Maximize Your Clergy Salary and Benefits Package."

Christine Jewett Robie, Dennis Leonard's first wife and the mother of his sons, said the Leonard men are "Type A" personalities and driven, successful businessmen.

She said she knows they live the word preached at the pulpit, faithfully giving 10 percent back to the church that began all those years ago with 11 people gathered for Bible study in the basement of the home of a building contractor named Dennis Leonard.

"They truly live and believe that if you give you will get back," said Jewett Robie, who lives in Boulder. "In a way, they've proven that. I don't think everyone knows all of the story, what they go through. They work hours and hours. Church is a business.

"They run it like a business. And it's been successful."

Monnie Nilsson of the Denver Post Research Library contributed to this report.

Lockheed says object part of 'sensor technology' testing that ended ThursdayWhat the heck is that thing? It's fair to assume that question was on the minds of many people who traveled along Colo. 128 south of Boulder this week if they happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a large, silver projectile perched alongside the highway and pointed north toward town.

PARIS (AP) — Bye, New York! Ciao, Milan! Bonjour, Paris! The world's largest traveling circus of fashion editors, models, buyers and journalists has descended on the French capital, clutching their metro maps and city guides, to cap the ready-to-wear fashion season. Full Story